By REY FLORES
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As I write this, we are once again gathered in our nation’s capital to protest the law of the land that allows for the legal killing of human life in the womb.
While the March for Life rally and march are basically protests, the events also offer the opportunity to network and connect with pro-life Americans from all across the land and beyond. Just yesterday I met people from Holland, Puerto Rico, and Poland.
While Monday’s temperature in Washington, D.C., reached close to 60F, the day of the March is closer to 12F with a wind chill of -5F. It was earlier estimated that 600,000 people would descend upon the nation’s political epicenter regardless of the frigid temperatures.
Of the hundreds of thousands of marchers, I always find one person who has an extra impact on me for one reason or another. That person this year John Lillis.
Lillis is the president of the Lifeboat Coffee Co. which opened its online doors on Tuesday, November 5, 2013. Lifeboat sells handcrafted whole and ground bean coffees, assorted teas and gifts to support pro-life groups who are working day in and day out to save the lives of America’s unborn, elderly, and infirm.
Lillis, Lifeboat Coffee’s founder and president, is one of the proto-survivors of America’s abortion holocaust because he was born in San Francisco at the end of August of 1967, some five months after California’s Therapeutic Abortion Act, and was abandoned for adoption there.
I was also born in 1967, so this was an important historical fact for me.
Growing up, Lillis spent a great deal of his life sharing in his adoptive parents’ work, volunteering with the Respect Life Commission and the St. Vincent de Paul Society.
While attending the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, John had the privilege of helping establish, organize, and raise funds for the original Crossroads pro-life walk across America. John later served for eight years as the PAC chairman for Nebraska’s largest no-exception, no-comprise pro-life group.
Since the mid-1990s, Lillis had been involved in the media, concentrating over the past ten years almost exclusively in Catholic radio. He built radio stations for clients across America and noticed they were all tied to a pro-life group or two and that both groups desperately needed a way to be at least semi-self-sufficient.
Early in 2012, John built America’s first-ever pro-life radio station studio in Sioux City, Iowa. Its main great window looks at the front door of Planned Parenthood some 20 feet away; it was built for the purpose of bringing tens of thousands of people together via radio to pray that the arriving women might change their minds and save their babies and that the doctors might stop killing and that the “mill” would be closed!
While remodeling the pro-life center around the radio studio, he thought to himself: “Almost everyone loves coffee. Why not marry my love for life with my near obsession for great coffee and see if we can’t create something to help sustain this place!” And that’s how the Lifeboat Coffee Co. idea was born.
Today, he and his family, including wife, kids, and in-laws, run Lifeboat Coffee. They work to change the landscape in America’s war on life by providing much-needed dollars to the front-lines and a chance for pro-life groups to make real money raising funds with coffee from a company that shares the same recognition of the dignity of all human life!
Many Americans, pro-lifers and Catholics included, spend thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars at the “big-bucks” coffee shops that actually and directly work to destroy human life through their funding of pro-abortion agendas.
The founder’s oldest son, Matthew, recently said it best: “Why not choose life every time you buy coffee, tea, and gifts for the people you love and let us send your favorite pro-life group money each month? It’s easy and straightforward!”
The Lifeboat Coffee Co. is different in several ways from other “cause” marketers.
First, says founder Lillis: “We’re the home of the true one-pounder.” He continued: “Most of your online specialty coffees come in 12-ounce packages and we just decided we’re going to have amazing coffees, for an amazing cause, at an amazing price — and that includes a larger portion for a very reasonable price and priority shipping at a price so low you’ll understand just how committed to life we really are.”
Lifeboat Coffee is committed to giving $1.00 from every item sold at lifeboatcoffee.com to the pro-life group that the customer chooses.
Additionally, pro-life groups around the country are lining up to feature Lifeboat Coffee on their web sites. This way, their supporters can further their efforts and give to their favorite pro-life group by going to the group’s web site and clicking the Lifeboat Coffee logo to shop for something they would have purchased on a regular basis from someone else, anyway.
Reaching Students
The Lifeboat Coffee Co. is even today working on plans to put coffee kiosks on college campuses across America. The company also has great fundraising packages available for private and Christian schools that are tired of selling magazines and popcorn and instead can have pro-life coffee, Ten Commandments & Beatitude plaques, as well as delicious honey and more!
Lifeboat Coffee roasts coffee blends from Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Sumatra, including light-to-medium roasts, dark roasts, French roast, and southern Italian espresso roasts too.
Again, the March for Life offers the opportunity to meet many interesting folks and organizations, but this was one of my favorites!
For more information visit www.lifeboatcoffee.com.
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(Rey Flores can be reached at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
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